Tag: corpocracy

Allegations are enough

This situation is either an argument against immigrants or against women in tech. Regardless, I think we all know that white men are to blame.

Amit Singhal has left his job at Uber as its SVP of engineering because he did not disclose to the car-hailing company that he left Google a year earlier after top executives there informed him of an allegation of sexual harassment from an employee that an internal investigation had found “credible.”

Singhal was asked to resign by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick this morning.

Uber execs found out about the situation after Recode informed them of the chain of events between Singhal and the search giant this week.

Sources at Uber said that the company did extensive background checks of Singhal and that it did not uncover any hint of the circumstances of his departure from Google. Singhal disputed the allegation to Google execs at the time.

In a statement to me, Singhal denied the allegation again, although he did acknowledge the dispute with Google.

Now, it’s entirely possible that Singhal is guilty of sexual harassment. But the idea that an allegation deemed “credible” by the witch hunters of human resources is something that needs to be proactively disclosed seems a little crazy, especially in light of the fact that most companies will not even reveal their reasoning for firing someone for fear of being sued.

The reality is that at least 20 percent of the workforce could be fired at any given time for violating the various corporate rules against sexual harassment and fraternization. However, as usual, the SJWs are selectively applying the rules where they find them advantageous and ignoring them wherever they don’t.

SJWs doubling down into disaster

It’s rather amusing to read this report on Big Social doubling down on their anti-hate campaigns even as the Daily Mail reports that corporates are beginning to abandon social media as an advertising vehicle:

Twitter announced Tuesday that it is expanding efforts to protect its users from abuse and harassment, the latest milestone in a broader, growing corporate campaign to crack down on online hate.

The social media giant said it has begun identifying people who have been banned for abusive behavior and it will stop them from creating new accounts. The company said its changes, which also include a new “safe search” feature, will be implemented in the coming weeks.

In July, Twitter banned conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor of the right-wing news site Breitbart News, for “participating in or inciting targeted abuse of individuals.” Twitter subsequently suspended the accounts of other prominent figureheads of the “alt-right” fringe movement, an amorphous mix of racism, white nationalism, xenophobia and anti-feminism.

Twitter has been under fire for failing to address hate and abuse on the site since its founding a decade ago. Balancing its reputation as a free speech haven has come into conflict with efforts to protect users.

Other internet companies have taken recent steps to curb abusive behavior and ban users who violate rules against promoting hate.

Reddit banned a forum for white nationalists from its social news website last Wednesday. A message at the link for the “r/altright” subreddit attributed its ban to an impermissible “proliferation of personal and confidential information.”

Also last week, the crowdfunding website GoFundMe removed a campaign for a conservative author and self-described “researcher” on the internet conspiracy theory known as “pizzagate,” which alleged with no evidence that Democrats were running a child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizza shop. Brittany Pettibone had launched her GoFundMe campaign for a video podcast about “traditional values that once made Western Civilization great,” including “love of one’s own culture, race and country.”

GoFundMe spokesman Bobby Whithorne said in an email that Pettibone’s campaign was removed because it violated the company’s terms of service, which include rules against promoting hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, terrorism or “intolerance of any kind.”

I’m convinced there is some sort of developmental relationship between SJWs and Gamma males. They both respond to stress and conflict in a reliably self-destructive manner. “Don’t like my attempts to control you? Turning your back and walking away from me? Well, just you watch me try even harder!”

The new foreign policy

Mike Whitney points out the radical transformation of foreign policy that Donald Trump intends to pursue, and observes that it is the basis for the Deep State’s opposition to him:

Donald Trump wants to fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy. The President-elect wants to abandon the destabilizing wars and regime change operations that have characterized US policy in the past and work collaboratively with countries like Russia that have a mutual interest in fighting terrorism and establishing regional security. Here’s an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1, that presents Trump’s views on the topic:

“We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past…We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments…. Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States]… We will partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism …In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will.”

Trump’s approach to foreign policy may seem commendable given the disastrous results in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq, but it is also a dramatic departure from the last 70 years of activity during which time the United States has either overthrown or attempted to overthrow 57 foreign governments. (According to author William Blum) This is why the political class and their wealthy constituents are so worried about Trump, it’s because they don’t want the new president mucking-around in a process he doesn’t understand, a process that has reshaped the world in a way that clearly benefits US mega-corporations while reinforcing Washington’s iron grip on global power. The bottom line is that “violence works” and any deviation from the present policy represents a direct threat to the people whose continued power and prosperity depend on that violence.

This is why none of the major media published Trump’s comments. The corporate bosses who own the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as ‘enemies of the state’, like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media’s agenda?

It doesn’t, which is why they’d rather the public remain in the dark about what Trump actually said.

But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump’s credibility, back him into a corner and remove him from office. That’s the plan, regime change in the USA.

This is why it is vital to continue to support the God-Emperor Ascendant, because he is going to need to draw heavily upon his connection to the power of the people in order to thwart the Deep State and their media allies.

And if they are so foolish as to continue to mutter dark threats to his person, well, Bush and Obama have combined to give the God-Emperor Ascendant a rather conclusive means of dealing with any troublesome U.S. citizens who pose a threat to the President.

How to kill your business

Why would you EVER take your computer to the Geek Squad, knowing that the FBI is paying them to inform on their customers?

Law enforcement has a number of informants working for it and the companies that already pay their paychecks, like UPS, for example. It also has a number of government employees working for the TSA, keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious” amounts of cash it can swoop in and seize.

Unsurprisingly, the FBI also has a number of paid informants. Some of these informants apparently work at Best Buy — Geek Squad by day, government informants by… well, also by day.

According to court records, Geek Squad technician John “Trey” Westphal, an FBI informant, reported he accidentally located on Rettenmaier’s computer an image of “a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck.” Westphal notified his boss, Justin Meade, also an FBI informant, who alerted colleague Randall Ratliff, another FBI informant at Best Buy, as well as the FBI. Claiming the image met the definition of child pornography and was tied to a series of illicit pictures known as the “Jenny” shots, agent Tracey Riley seized the hard drive.

Not necessarily a problem, considering companies performing computer/electronic device repair are legally required to report discovered child porn to law enforcement. The difference here is the paycheck. This Geek Squad member had been paid $500 for digging around in customers’ computers and reporting his findings to the FBI. That changes the motivation from legal obligation to a chance to earn extra cash by digging around in files not essential to the repair work at hand.

More of a problem is the FBI’s tactics. While it possibly could have simply pointed to the legal obligation Best Buy has to report discovered child porn, it proactively destroyed this argument by apparently trying to cover up the origin of its investigation, as well as a couple of warrantless searches.

Setting aside the issue of whether the search of Rettenmaier’s computer constituted an illegal search by private individuals acting as government agents, the FBI undertook a series of dishonest measures in hopes of building a case, according to James D. Riddet, Rettenmaier’s San Clemente-based defense attorney. Riddet says agents conducted two additional searches of the computer without obtaining necessary warrants, lied to trick a federal magistrate judge into authorizing a search warrant, then tried to cover up their misdeeds by initially hiding records.

The “private search” issue is mentioned briefly in OC Weekly’s report, but should be examined more closely. Private searches are acceptable, but the introduction of cash payments, as well as the FBI having an official liaison with Best Buy suggests the searches aren’t really “private.” Instead, the FBI appears to be using private searches to route around warrant requirements. That’s not permissible and even the FBI’s belief that going after the “worst of worst” isn’t going to be enough to salvage these warrantless searches.

One would think they are unaware of how Americans have learned that a justifiable use of a dangerous tactic always leads to unjustifiable uses of it. It’s one thing for there to be a mechanism for reporting this sort of thing when evidence of egregious criminal wrongdoing is encountered, but it is absolutely something else entirely when private services are compensated and incentivized to hunt for it, or worse, create it.

An unamenable authority

Notice how Apple attempts to utilize its position as a market gatekeeper to force other companies, such as Gab, to jump through various hoops, and potentially, even converge itself, in order to access the customers Apple controls.

An abbreviated summary of Gab’s travails, as described by Andrew Torba:

They want us to include our guidelines in the app and update guidelines to include the NSFW language. It’s absolutely beyond ridiculous the hoops they are forcing us through. Every rejection has more requirements. We will get there. Or we will raise hell about it.

Folks this is what we got back from Apple. Every time we fix what they want, they magically come up with new requirements. It’s absolutely disgusting. They want us banning people. They want us to add blocking. They want us removing content within 24 hours. This is insane.

Folks we are pushing back on Apple bigly.

  • We have feed filters. 
  • We have user muting. 
  • We have the ability to flag content.

There is absolutely no way this app should not be approved. Submitting an appeal, then raising hell on this issue in a very public way. Apple wants to play? We will play.

Here is our reply to Apple folks.
-We have feed filters.
-We have muting.
-We have flagging for illegal content.
-We review flagged content and can address it quickly if it breaks the law/guidelines.
-We can certainly show examples of “objectionable content” on any other social platform.

Now, as anyone who has been on Twitter or Wikipedia knows, there is a considerable amount of NSFW content, none of which is marked as such. But it’s pointless to try to base an argument on this obvious double standard, because SJW-converged corporations are shamelessly hypocritical and they don’t hesitate to play ideological favorites.

Just as a right-wing employee will be fired over the smallest perceived infraction that doesn’t even violate company policy while an SJW employee can violate multiple company policies at will without suffering any consequences, every Alt-Tech organization will be, to at least some extent, obstructed and frozen out by the SJW-converged tech giants.

That’s to be expected. The problem will get worse before it gets better, but it is only a problem in the short run, because whether the Alt-Tech organization runs the gauntlet, as Gab has, or elects to simply ignore it, as Infogalactic has to date, the experience will only make the Alt-Tech stronger and more disruptive.

The spice will not flow

A letter from Penzey’s Spices reveals they are fully SJW-converged. Also, that they are amusingly delusional. The amusing thing is that they think anyone was paying any attention to their “stand”, and that they think they’ve proved “Donald Trump simply has no one supporting his views for America”.


What it really means is that no one is paying attention to their idiot politics. Yet.



Dear CEO,

Please give us a moment to share something we hope you will find very valuable.

Our customers come from all walks of life. The kindness of cooks knows no borders or divides. In the aftermath of the election, seeing the intentional damage inflicted on so many outside the white heterosexual male world, we raised our voice. We felt we had to. We did this because we are Penzeys. The Spice business is so intertwined with history that it’s not really possible to have one without the other. It became clear to us that we are now in a moment history will long have its eyes upon. For the sake of our customers, and for the sake of future generations, we felt the time had come to stand on the right side of history.

And while the reasons for why we took a stand might be specific to our unique outlook, what we learned actually applies to all commerce in the United States. What we learned is that President-elect Donald Trump has no real support. Voters, sure, but no constituency. Running a campaign on “that horrible-terrible-woman who should be locked up,” while at the same time working to raise fear of minorities among white voters with limited access to education, clearly achieved its goal. But none of it left Americans with any sense of connection to the candidate they actually voted for.

Willing to take a hit for what is right, we did what we did. In the two weeks since, online sales are up 59.9%, gift box sales up 135%. And we didn’t have a catalog arrive in this window this year, while last year we had 1.1 million! Yes, maybe for the moment we have lost 3% of our customers because of the so-called “right wing firestorm.” And, yes, they send emails of rage, and ALL CAPS, and bad language with the hope of creating the perception that they are bigger than they really are. But what we learned is that, in terms of retail spending, Donald Trump simply has no one supporting his views for America. He has no constituency.

America’s Values, on the other hand, have a really sizable constituency, and that constituency moves quickly to support those that stand up for the values of America. If, as a company, you have values, now is the time to share them. You may well lose a chunk of your AM radio-listening customers, but if you really are honest and sincere, don’t be surprised to see your promotions suddenly, finally, find active engagement with the Millennial generation.

And the time for this really is now. We understand all too well that, with the holidays, December is a tough month to get things done. We understand that a change in direction will not be easy, but you are where you are because you don’t need things to be easy. If you wait until after the wheels come off the track for the incoming administration, this moment will have passed. And while there’s no bad time to do the right thing, to do the right thing at the same time as others in your industry will work so much better than waiting until someone else has shown the way.

In this moment there is finally the real chance to unite our nation in our shared rejection of sexism, homophobia, and racism. This is your chance to stand up for America’s values and make January a tent pole in your company’s history. Opportunities to do the right thing at the time when doing the right thing makes all the difference come once in a lifetime. Make your history proud.

Thanks for reading,

Penzeys Spices

Don’t support the corporate cucks

Their values are not our values:

The Kellogg Co. said in a statement that it regularly works with media buying partners to “ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values as set forth in our advertising guidelines.”

Kellogg’s guidelines state that it won’t place ads in media that “encourages offensive behavior to others, or where the media is not consistent with our product or corporate image.”

The cereal company said that it advertises on a large number of websites, “so occasionally something is inadvertently missed. In this case, we learned from consumers that ads were placed on Breitbart.com and decided to discontinue advertising there.”

It is common for companies to buy online ads through third-party networks or ad exchanges that place the ads on numerous sites. As a result, many companies may not be aware of which sites on which their ads ultimately appear.

Other companies that have pulled their ads from Breitbart in recent weeks include the insurance giant Allstate and the ad exchange AppNexus.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can give up Rice Krispies for America. But it’s good to know that we can refuse to do business with those who don’t share our values.

10 buoni motivi

Per votare NO dicembre 4

Ten good reasons to vote NO. If you stay home, you help Renzi! Contrary to what Renzi wants you to believe, his “reform” will not resolve our problems, but create new ones.

There are three reasons the Italian referendum is so important. The first is that if the constitutional reforms pass, it will be much easier for the eurocrats to force their policies through the more-centralized Italian government. The second is that if it fails, the eurocrat Renzi has said he will resign as Prime Minister since his minority government won’t be able to govern. The third is that this is a virtual referendum on the euro and the EU, and a strong NO vote will serve as a precursor to Italy exiting both the currency and the globalist entity.

In fact, some EU observers are already predicting that if Italy votes no, and the NO vote is leading strongly in the polls, the EU will collapse.

#IOVOTONO

No freedom without nations

Viktor Orban of Hungary decries the globalist attempt to reduce nations to mere population demographics:

At a commemoration of a 1956 anti-Communist uprising, Hungary’s right-wing leader Viktor Orban said his country must stand up to Europe’s “Sovietization” and defend its borders against mass migration.

Orban, a critic of the European Union and an early opponent of the recent migration wave into the continent, said freedom in Europe depended on the nation state and Christian traditions.

“People who love their freedom must save Brussels from Sovietization, from people who want to tell us who we should live with in our countries,” the prime minister said to cheers from a crowd of several thousand.

“We want to be a European nation not a nationality within Europe,” he said.

One thing Stefan Molyneux mentioned last night that stuck with me today was a common libertarian incoherency. On the one hand, they believe that states’ rights are superior to centralized government. On the other, they believe that globalization is better than national governments.

This does not computer. Globalism, the imperial ideology of which the EU is merely one organ, will infringe upon individual rights far more than the average national government, and moreover, will render it impossible for every individual to vote with his feet. Globalization is worse than Sovietization, as at least the Soviet ambitions were, by and large, regional in nature.

In fact, one can quite reasonably make the case that Globalism is considerably more dangerous to the human race than either Communism or Nazism ever were.

A lesson in Gamma

So, this would have appeared to come out of the blue to everyone on Gab yesterday.

Allen Ayler@PseudoCrusader
@voxday You follow just 32 people. Must be your egotistical self importance.

Vox Day@voxday
Very foolish, Allen. I was going to leave our email exchange private, but I’ll go ahead and publish it on Alpha Game now.

It is a powerful lesson in not permitting Gammas in your project.

As a general rule, I don’t expose people who email me, whether they are readers, critics, or even hatemailers. But sometimes, it is beneficial to do so, in order to provide an object lesson to those who believe that they can behave abusively with impunity, particularly in cases where there is a deeper lesson to be learned. And it’s never a bad thing to remind people, from time to time, that picking a fight with someone whose friends and allies call him “Supreme Dark Lord” is probably not a wise thing to do.

But before you think I am attempting to rationalize a violation of privacy, please be aware that he has publicly requested that I post it: “Please post my email so people can know how full of shit you are.” Also, on Gab: “Post the fucking email you hypocrite self-deluded asshole.”

One of the challenges of running any organization, be it professional or volunteer, is dealing with the quirks of the various members, most of which are based on their socio-sexual status. Alphas are going to have inappropriate affairs, Betas are going to get promoted over their heads, Lambdas are going to talk relentlessly, and inappropriately, about their personal predilections and social lives, Gammas are going to preen, posture, pout, and occasionally sabotage projects and people, Sigmas are going to create the occasional intra-organizational upheaval, for good or ill, and Omegas are going to get themselves accused of sexual harassment.

That’s all normal. You have to expect it as long as you’re going to work with human beings. The key is learning to anticipate the problems and head them off at the pass. Don’t let the Alpha hire a hot secretary, or at the very least, be sure she isn’t married. Keep the Beta in a well-paid supporting position and give him a young subordinate Alpha to help him make decisions. Put the Lambda near the women where he’ll entertain them. Try to steer the Sigma’s idiosyncracies in a direction where he’ll help the organization rather than harm it. Give the Gammas tasks that flatter their egos and keep them far away from any managerial responsibilities. Stash the Omegas where they can’t creep out the women. Keep everybody out of the way of the Deltas who actually do most of the meaningful work.

Anyhow, this exchange took place two days ago. I would have let it go, except the Gamma concerned simply couldn’t resist taking it public. Gammas, as Delta Man has repeatedly pointed out, not only sabotage others, they also tend to sabotage themselves. But I have seldom seen a Gamma sabotage himself so thoroughly as Mr. Ayler managed to do when attempting to volunteer to “help” Infogalactic.

I’m not saying there was anything wrong with his desire to know what was going on. Nor am I defending my failure to respond to him in a timely manner. But, as you’ll see, my initial impression that there was something off about him proved to be correct. In spades.